How Echo Fox can push fighting games into primetime esports

How Echo Fox can push fighting games into primetime esports

Where were you on Tuesday, January 4, 2017 at 10 AM PT when Echo Fox sent a shockwave throughout the fighting game community?

While people were eating breakfast, taking in their morning news and coffee, or just getting settled into work, Echo Fox put the FGC — and esports — on notice by signing several huge names. On one hand, the organization wants to make a lasting impression on the overall competitive fighting game scene. It wants to contribute to pushing the FGC over the hump and into primetime esports.

Echo Fox took Street Fighter players Justin Wong, Yusuke Momochi, and Yuko “ChocoBlanka” Momochi away from Evil Geniuses. They signed Tokido, a guy I knew was biding his time, waiting for the right offer to come along. That blew me away. Momochi and ChocoBlanka make sense with the connection to Wong and former EG manager Antonio Javier. But Tokido, Wong, and Momochi all on the same team? They could’ve stopped there.

But they didn’t. They picked up two of the best Mortal Kombat X players on the planet, Dominique “SonicFox” MacLean and Brad “Scar” Vaughn, and up-and-coming Smash 4 player Leonardo “MKLeo” Lopez Perez.

In recent history, Evil Geniuses may have been the biggest supergroup, featuring Wong, Momochi, ChocoBlanka, Ricki Ortiz, Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez, and Kenneth “K-Brad” Bradley. All were managed by Antonio Javier before he left the team earlier this year. This was the FGC Dream Team. People had been comparing it to the current generation Golden State Warriors or the three-peat championship Los Angeles Lakers that Rick Fox played for.

What makes what Echo Fox did so remarkable is that the org acknowledged more than Street Fighter V and Smash. They’re going all in on Mortal Kombat X and Injustice 2 when it releases. They’re primed for Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite (assuming Wong transitions to it) and they’re not done in the long-term, as Javier mentioned when speaking with Yahoo Esports about the possibility of adding to the FGC division in the future.